"You're sure about this?" asked Olaf Berg.
Sven Holm threw Olaf an irritated glance. He was getting really tired of people asking him if he was sure everything in the New World - except for the size of the planet and its lands - was ten times smaller than back on Earth.
"Olaf," he said. "I have to tell you something. If people don't stop asking me if I'm sure, I'll start doing lobotomies with an ax."
"Sorry. I'm sorry, Sven. I couldn't help it. I mean, this is just incredible. I can't get my head around it."
"You will, soon. I'm appointing you the leader of the next expedition to find the Lula river."
"Thank you. It's a great honor. But didn't you say you wanted to lead it yourself?"
"I wanted to. I still want to. But I can't. There's a lot of things that need to get done here, and done fast. And it's going to take a while to reach the river. It's over two hundred kilometers away instead of twenty."
"If we are ten times smaller," Olaf Berg said judiciously, "Then it's still twenty kilometers. It just feels like two hundred."
Sven let out his breath with a hiss through his clenched teeth.
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry, Sven. And thank you again for appointing me the expedition leader. I promise you we'll find the river."
"Good," Sven said, and walked away. He intended to take a stroll to the lake shore. He wanted to have some time to himself, to relax and enjoy the spring weather.
Fifty two days had passed from that fateful day on which the glowing cube had appeared in his farmyard. Five hundred and twenty New World days! It was his second spring in the New World.
He reached the lake and saw that the last of ice was gone. A family of ducks was swimming a stone's throw from where he stood, the little ducklings following the mother in a near-perfect V formation. Other birds wheeled overhead, filling the air with excited cries. Spring was back! Life was beginning anew! He stood and looked at the greening land, listening to the birds. He cleared his mind of all thoughts and was about to smile when someone said:
"Sven?"
He whirled round, his incipient smile changing into a snarl. It was Vidar, one of the team he'd sent out a fortnight earlier to look for gold and silver ore. Vidar's face was covered in bruises and cuts, and one of his arms was in a sling.
"Vidar! What happened?"
"We were attacked," said Vidar. "They had slingshots. We couldn't get at them. They were hidden behind rocks halfway up the slope and - "
"Vidar! Get a grip! When? Who? Where?"
"Day before yesterday. We were on our way back from the copper mine. I don't know who they were, but there were at least a dozen of them. We were more than halfway home. That spot between two hills where Jens found pyrite last year. They were hidden behind rocks and trees on the slopes. They had slingshots. We tried to charge them, but there were just four of us and we couldn't - we didn't - we had to drop everything and run."
"Drop everything? What do you mean?"
"We had three sacks full of gold and silver ore. They were too heavy. We had to drop them to get away. We left the shovels, too. But we kept the picks. Well, Lennart lost his when he fell over, but we brought the remaining two back. I remembered you said picks were precious. I even thought about going back for Lennart's, but they'd have stoned us to death, Sven. They were pretty good with those slingshots. And we hadn't taken any weapons, on account of all the stuff we had to carry. We just had a couple of axes and knives. That route, that whole area had always been safe. We'd never encountered anyone there."
"What about the others? Are they okay?"
"Henrik has a broken hand. It looks pretty awful and it hurts a lot, he says. And Martin nearly lost an eye. He'll be okay, though. I don't know about Henrik."
"Where is he now?"
"Ulla's looking at him."
"Okay, let's go," said Sven, and they started walking back to the settlement. Sven had intended to give Lennart a proper dressing down: three sacks of precious ore and a pick lost! And the infamy of being beaten by a bunch of stone-throwing jerks too cowardly to fight hand-to-hand! But when he saw that Vidar was limping badly, he relented.
"What happened to your leg?" he asked.
"A stone hit my knee. Nothing serious. It will pass."
"You were lucky to escape those guys with a bad knee," Sven said, somewhat suspiciously.
"Oh, they didn't chase us. They'd probably spied on us all along, and just wanted the sacks."
"You really have no idea where they could have come from?"
Vidar shook his head.
"None," he said.
When they reached the settlement, Sven told Vidar to go and get some rest, and directed his steps to Ulla's hut. She wasn't there. Frowning, he turned around and went to the hall.
The Svenborg hall was the only stone building in the village. It measured forty paces by twenty, and contained the settlement's only table: a big, flat slab of rock set on stones of equal height. It had been a hell of a job, getting that slab there. It took six men, and they dropped it many times on the way. Martin's foot had been crushed on one of those occasions, and Sven had been forced to kill him. He removed Martin's implant back in the Old World, and gave him a new one.
Sven entered the hall. It was half-dark inside, but Henrik, spread out on the stone table, was well illuminated by the two torches held by girls that stood nearby. Ulla was crouched by the side of the table, sharpening the blade of an ax. It rasped rhythmically on the whetting stone.
Sven approached the table, and looked down on Henrik. Henrik's eyes were squeezed shut, and he held a piece of wood between his teeth. His right hand, lying by his side, was swollen into a purple ball covered with crusted blood.
"Ulla," said Sven. "Stop. We need to have a talk. Come."
She followed him to the corner of the hall, carrying the ax and the whetstone. She looked vaguely guilty, as if she knew she'd done something wrong but couldn't remember what it had been.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" asked Sven.
Looking at her feet, she said:
"It's hopeless. He's got at least a couple of bones broken in that hand. And it's infected."
"So you're going to cut it off? Are you out of your mind?"
"He won't survive, otherwise."
"Of course he won't survive. I'm going right back home to remove his implant. Then he'll be back again, as good as new. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
But he knew what was wrong with her, knew it even before he asked. A few of the Viking settlers - quite a few, in fact - had developed a strong taste for gore. There had even been a couple of fights over the privilege of slaughtering a chicken or a sheep. Both men and women were affected, and Sven knew Ulla was one of the women.
Ulla was silent, still looking at the ground. Sven said:
"Look at me."
She did, and he had to fight hard to control his face, because there was madness in her eyes.
"You've been eating those mushrooms again," he said. "That's it. You're turning your stash over to me. All of it. You'll get a couple of caps per week, just like everyone else. Is that clear?"
She bared her teeth at him and screeched like a madwoman. For a moment he thought she was going to strike him with her ax. But she didn't. She rushed past him and out of the building and he heard her screech again, outside.
It was time for a cleansing of the tribe. He'd already had to do it twice. At this rate, all the implant kits would be gone before he'd managed to establish a chain of settlements reaching all the way to the Baltic coast. Seventeen hundred kilometers! He needed at least fifty settlements, ending with a big seaport. Fifty? He needed hundreds, thousands if he was to conquer the world!
He had to make some big decisions, fast. There was a general assembly planned for that very evening: a going-away party for Olaf Berg and his team of explorers. It was the ideal occasion on which to announce his decisions.
But he had to make them first, and he had to put Henrik out of his misery even before that. He looked at the women holding the torches. Lena was one of them, and he knew Lena back home wasn't asleep on the hiber bed.
He walked up to her and said:
"Lena, I need to return home right now. Send the message to wake me up."
She nodded and closed her eyes, concentrating. Sven leaned over Henrik and put his hand on Hernik's forehead. It was hot with fever.
The touch of his hand made Henrik open his eyes. They were crazy with fear. Sven said:
"It's going to be okay, Henrik. It's rebirth time."
Henrik's eyes immediately became sane. He took out the piece of wood from between his teeth with his healthy hand, and said:
"Really? You said we were to save the implant kits. I thought - Ulla said - "
"Forget it. She's gone crazy. It's time for a new Ulla, too. And - "
Sven broke off, struck by a new thought. He had to send out an armed party to look for the bandits that had attacked Vidar's team. There would be more casualties. It made sense to send all the blood-lusting crazies on that operation. It wouldn't matter if they got grievously wounded or killed. They were all due for a rebirth anyway.
He patted Henrik's hot forehead.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "I've got it all figured out."
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